Tesla deliveries fall

The Tesla share price has had a torrid time lately. That's not surprising when you consider the first quarter vehicle delivery numbers they reported yesterday. For the first three months of 2024 Tesla delivered 387k vehicles, far below the expected 454k. This compares very poorly to the final quarter of 2023 when 485k vehicles were delivered.

There is no doubt that Tesla is facing both market and competitive pressures. Rival automakers are scaling up, and electric vehicle (EV) demand seems to be between growth waves. I'm still very confident that we will see a mass transition to EVs, but as with all things in life, this won't happen in a straight line.

If you own Tesla shares, you should hold on to them. If we sold stocks every time they went through a tough patch, or faced a demand cycle challenge we would churn through a new portfolio every 4 years. For example, we would have cut Nvidia loose in 2018 when chip demand from crypto miners fell sharply. We would have dumped Facebook (now Meta) when ad sales slumped in 2022. Those would have been huge mistakes.

We are in this for the long run and believe that Tesla remains at the forefront of a mass revolution in mobility, to EVs with greater self-driving capabilities. Let's keep focused on the big picture.